Carol Kleinfeldt
DCL
Now that the holiday season has come around again, I reassembled my cocktail testers from the summer and got them ready to judge a whole new set of drinks. The setup remained the same. I mixed the cocktails and set them out without telling anyone what was in them. We all took a sip, then discussed the drinks and then when we had tried them all, we rated them. The biggest difference this time around was that I was at home rather than at the cottage so I had nice glasses and different garnishes to add to the drinks. As with the last time, the only organic liquor I could get was Square One Vodka.
My intrepid judges tasted ten cocktails, so that you wouldn't have to. As with the summer cocktails, I looked for recipes that didn't require a lot of mixing, or ingredients that you would never use again. We tried three whisky based, three gin based and three vodka based and one tequila based drinks. With all due respect to my colleague Sara, one taste of the Pumpkin cocktail had all six of us quickly covering our mouths in horror. To be fair, it was a different recipe, but no one liked the pumpkin itself. It was our winter version of the Yin Yang Martini, now affectionately known in the group as Muskoka Mud. Here are the results of the test.
